Life Skill: Life Management

Let’s talk about where we’ve been

First night we talked about – where we would like to be in a year.
Some of you said…

Let’s start that again – where would you like to be in a year or two – what stage of your life? What level of stability?

Then we talked about things that are in the the way from you getting there.
We discussed… – What do you remember about these topics?

Anger – (Give it away)
Keeping and Job -
Stress – (Give it away)
Fear – (Give it away)
Money Management
Life Management

Let’s talk about where we are
We’re at the bridge….
No – where we are spiritually…

I don’t know about you – but for years I was struggling.
I thought my addiction – helped me forget about my depression and lack of self worth. I thought it helped. I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself right?

Depression => addiction => suicide attempt => more depression => more addiction…
it wouldn’t stop.

And then I recognized the truth found in these words…

We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

There are many more steps – but those three changed my life, and it also changed Bill’s.

If you read the AA big book – you can read Bill W’s story.

From Bill’s Story (Alcoholics Anonymous)
The door opened and he stood there, fresh-skinned and glowing. There was something about his eyes. He was inexplicably different. What had happened?
I pushed a drink across the table. He refused it. Disappointed but curious, I wondered what had got into the fellow. He wasn’t himself.

“Come, what’s all this about?” I queried.

He looked straight at me. Simply, but smilingly, he said,
“I’ve got religion.”

I was aghast. So that was it — last summer an alcoholic crackpot; now, I suspected, a little cracked about religion. He had that starry-eyed look. Yes, the old boy was on fire all right. But bless his heart, let him rant! Besides, my gin would last longer than his preaching.

But he did no ranting. In a matter of fact way he told how two men had appeared in court, persuading the judge to suspend his commitment. They had told of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. That was two months ago and the result was self-evident. It worked!

He had come to pass his experience along to me — if I cared to have it. I was shocked, but interested. Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless.

He talked for hours. Childhood memories rose before me. I could almost hear the sound of the preacher’s voice as I sat, on still Sundays, way over there on the hillside; there was that proffered temperance pledge I never signed; my grandfather’s good natured contempt of some church fold and their doings; his insistence that the spheres really had their music; but his denial of the preacher’s right to tell him how he must listen; his fearlessness as he spoke of these things just before he died; these recollections welled up from the past. They made me swallow hard.

That war-time day in old Winchester Cathedral came back again.

I had always believed in a Power greater that myself. I had often pondered these things. I was not an atheist. Few people really are, for that means blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes no where. My intellectual heroes, the chemists, the astronomers, even the evolutionist, suggested vast laws and forces at work. Despite contrary indications, I had little doubt that a might purpose and rhythm underlay all. How could there be so much of precise and immutable law, and no intelligence? I simply had to believe in a Spirit of the Universe, who knew neither time nor limitation. But that was as far as I had gone.

With ministers, and the world’s religions, I parted right there. When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory.
To Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him. His moral teaching — most excellent. For myself, I had adopted those parts which seemed convenient and not too difficult; the rest I disregarded.

The wars which had been fought, the burnings and chicanery that religious dispute had facilitated, made me sick I honestly doubted whether, on balance, the religions of mankind had done any good. Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim jest. If there was a Devil, he seemed the Boss Universal, and he
certainly had me.

But my friend sat before me, and he made the pointblank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known!

Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that minute; and this was none at all.

That floored me. It began to look as though religious people were right after all. Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible. My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then. Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table. He shouted great tidings.

I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized. He was on different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.

Despite the living example of my friend there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn’t like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way.

My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?”

That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.

It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!

Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view.

The real significance of my experience in the Cathedral burst upon me. For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me — and He came. But soon the sense of His presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. And so it had been ever since. How blind I had been.

Some of you heard about God a long time ago – but something happened. You forgot, or maybe a bad experience with a bad Christian, maybe it was a reality that this wasn’t going to fix you in a day – maybe it was a misunderstanding – or maybe too much criticism or hypocrisy in the church…

We cannot talk about Life Management – without talking about the giver of life.
Why?

Who knows best how to manage your life – but the one who gave it to you.

Since the original creation – man has been running from God, trying is own thing
Somehow many of those “things we try” get between us and God.

I want you to watch a video of this. It’s a drama performed a group of kids. In the opening you will see a character to represents God – who created this person in his image. And then you will see her do what I did – but things between me and God.

So what are the things that you put between you and God?

AA starts with a moral inventory, nature of our wrongs, defects of character, ask God to remove our shortcomings, made a list of all persons we had harmed, make amends, continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

So I’m carrying the message today – to you. Everyone needs to know their higher power. Now I’m not vague and I’m not going to pretend – I’m preaching Christ.

This day is very significant. This is the day that we celebrate the death of Jesus Christ.

Even if you are not a Christian – think about what this great man did.
He died for the sins of the world. He died for you.

He wants the relationship between you and Him to be restored. How do you do that?

AA says: 3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him

The Bible Says:

Romans 10:9
9)That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10) For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
13) “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.